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Getting organised

I’ve been wanting to organise all our bits like vouchers, cards, appointments…so I thought a fabric covered pin board or memo board for the kitchen would be the way forward. I did some background reading on how to make one, and found a few different methods:

Mary Poppins
Use a cork pinboard and staple down fabric, batting, and ribbons.

Crafty loops
Start with a piece of chipboard and glue the fabric, batting, and ribbons. Slightly long video tutorial, but presented nicely, and I found it useful to see how she folded the fabric at the back.

The 36th Avenue
No batting, just cover a cork pinboard and tuck the fabric into the frame.

And then I winged it. I’d planned to get a pinboard to cover, but it seemed like Aberdeen had run out of cork or something, so I went with a canvas instead. I felt stretched canvas was best, as it wasn’t too deep, but still had a frame for sturdiness and to attach screws for hanging.

I was given a Hobbycraft voucher for Christmas so I went nuts put it to good use.

1. First I glued on the batting to the back of the canvas, snug around the inside of the frame. I started gluing from the centre outwards, and glued down 4 layers. The batting isn’t a must, but I felt it gave the canvas a bit more weight, and I’ve then got the option of using pushpins to pin things up if I want to.

2. Next came the fabric. I trimmed it so that the sides folded round to the back but didn’t extend beyond the wooden frame. I glued down the corners first, keeping the whole piece taut, and then did the sides. It definitely helps to iron the fabric first to keep the front smooth and even.

3. Now the fun bit, laying out the ribbon. I used the fabric pattern to keep my lines even, and used a bit of tape to hold each length in place. The one thing I’d change if I did it again would be to use slightly fewer ribbons and have the spaces a little wider.
So, most people just glue down all the diagonal lines going one way first, and then all the lines going the other way on top. I have issues and couldn’t bear the asymmetry of that so I had to go ‘over/under’.

This makes it a little more difficult to glue both the top and bottom ribbons down together, but it does make it easier to see where your ribbons cross. Keeping the ribbons taut, I used a dot of glue at each junction, first for the bottom ribbon to the fabric, then the top ribbon to the bottom ribbon. I started at one corner and worked my way across diagonally. Then I flipped it over and glued down the backs, again pulling the ribbons a little to keep them nice and taut. You can see a small bump of glue at each junction, but it’s not too obvious once it’s on the wall. Alternatively a small button on top of each junction would cover that nicely too.

Here is the back, with the ends of the ribbons glued down and trimmed. Gareth found me some screws and screwed them to the inner sides of the frame, and then tied a length of string between them, so it could hang off a picture hook on the wall.